About the author
Sheena Wilkinson was born in Belfast in 1968, and teaches English at Methodist College, Belfast. She studied at University College, Durham, and is an award-winning short story writer, who won the Brian Moore award in 2006 with her first short story, Amputees. For her doctorate, she looked at the common themes of school novels for women, and girlsโ school stories, and the results were published by the Bettany Press in 2007, as Friends in the Fourth. She said โI used to feel guilty about my enduring love of childrenโs literature, until I hit on the cunning idea of studying the relationship between childrenโs and adultsโ fiction which made it respectable.โ
Her ambition when she was twelve was to write lots of books and have a pony; she did achieve the pony, Songbird, and is on her way with the books. She saw from her own experience in the horse world that boys did like horses: they were not the sole preserve of girls. The horse world now is much more feminised than it was: the commodification and general pinkness surrounding horses and ponies means many boys would run miles before admitting a keenness for horses. The Pony Clubโs membership is over 30,000, of whom something over 300 are boys.
Sheena Wilkinsonโs hero, Declan, is an out of control teenager from Belfast. His mother is an alcoholic, and his school career is a disaster. He has to shift for himself, and he constantly gets it wrong. Even when things start going right, Declan is still perfectly capable of propelling life from triumph to disaster. The Declan stories, Taking Flight and Grounded, pull no punches. They deal with major themes: disaffected boys; violence and teenage pregnancy. They are extraordinarily good, and Taking Flight has won several prizes. It was one of the Irish Timesโs books of the year 2011.
Finding the books
All in print.
Links and sources
Autobiographical information on Sheena Wilkinson at the Bettany Press
An interview with Sheena Wilkinson, where you can also hear her reading an extract from Taking Flight
Read Sheena Wilkinsonโs short story, Holding On
More on Sheena Wilkinsonโs short stories
Series
Declan Kelly
Taking Flight
Grounded
Too Many Ponies
Bibliography (pony books only)
Taking Flight
Little Island, Dublin, 2011, pp
Declan and Vicky are cousins living in Ireland, but thatโs the only thing they have in common. Vickyโs parents are divorced, and sheโs something of a princess. Sheโs used to persuading her father to buy her anything she wants, and that includes a show jumper, Flight. Vickyโs life is just fine: and then her out of control cousin, Declan, comes to stay, a bad boy from a Belfast housing estate.
Grounded
Little Island, Dublin, 2012, 287 pp.
It looks as if life is set fair for Declan now: heโs winning jumping classes with Vickyโs showjumper, Flight, has a girlfriend, and his motherโs sober and putting her life back together. But then the blows start to fall: Vicky sells Flight. And Seaneenโs pregnant.
Too Many Ponies
Little Island, Dublin, 2013
Aimed at a younger readership than her previous novels, Too Many Ponies has a pony-mad heroine called Lucy. Sheโs jealous of Aidan Kelly because his parents own the stables where she keeps her pony. The two start at the same secondary school, and Lucy finds that Aidanโs bullied because heโs the only boy who has anything to do with ponies.
